Mass Graves Of Suspected ISIS Victims Found In Syria, Including Women And Children

Illustration of ISIS. (Wikimedia Commons/Aharan_kotogo)

JAKARTA - The mass graves of suspected victims of the ISIS terrorist group were found by Kurdish forces in northern Syria, including women and children.

"At least 29 bodies, including a woman and two children, have been found in a mass grave" near a hotel in Manbij, said an official of the Kurdish-affiliated Manbij civil council, speaking on condition of anonymity.

ISIS turned the hotel into a prison when it seized control of the northern city between 2014 and 2016. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish militia backed by the West, pushed ISIS out of Manbij in August 2016.

The mass grave was excavated Wednesday by city workers working on a sewage system, the Manbij military council said.

Some of the victims appeared to have been handcuffed and blindfolded, he said.

The military council said it was not clear when they were killed, but that it was when ISIS ruled Manbij.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the bodies were believed to belong to people abducted by ISIS fighters.

To note, dozens of mass graves have been found in Iraq and Syria but the identification process is slow, expensive and complicated.

ISIS seized large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a "caliphate" and killing thousands before the intervention of the US-led coalition in support of Iraqi forces and Syrian-Kurdish militias helping to defeat the group.

One of the largest ISIS mass graves reportedly contained 200 bodies and was discovered in 2019 near Raqqa, the group's former de facto capital in Syria.

Meanwhile, human rights groups have repeatedly called on Kurdish authorities and the Syrian government to investigate the fate of the thousands of people who disappeared during ISIS rule.

The missing include British reporter John Cantlie and Italian Jesuit priest Paolo Dall'Oglio.

Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011 after a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, has killed nearly half a million people and forced about half of the country's pre-war population to flee their homes.